


life, death, and everything in between

by but_seriously



Category: The Originals (TV), Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2017-12-25 12:34:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/953164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/but_seriously/pseuds/but_seriously
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, a fistful of drabbles and oneshots - some prompted, some not - revolving around the Original family (and now, other characters as well).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**1\. magnolia**

The call from Katerina was suspicious and vague (and suspiciously vague), but he had to see for himself.

The paint from the foyer smells fresh and the marble from the grand staircase shine as bright as his own Italian shoes as he makes his way silently upstairs. Despite the smell of the new renovations still hanging in the air he can still sense it as he heads down the little used hallway: the smell of rain-splattered grass and magnolias. Just a hint of nutmeg.

She’s sleeping, a hand he remembers to be soft resting under her cheek and he catalogues it in his mind hungrily, almost a century of not seeing her enough to make him want to shake her awake (but he doesn’t). She looks delicate, like a little China doll with her golden hair spilling over her shoulders, and all he can do is stand by the doorway and stare. 

What does one dream of, he muses, when they’ve been sleeping for ninety years?

Later, Elijah closes the door soundless behind him and leaves. The note he had been planning on leaving behind lies crumpled in his suit pocket.

 

 

 

 **2\. count back anesthetize**  

“We’re here today to talk about your…” Elijah shuffles the sheaf of papers before him, “anger issues.”

Klaus scowls and slumps even further down the leather sofa, his arms crossed tight over his chest. “I don’t have bloody anger issues.”

"Impulsive daggering, threatening people with aforementioned dagggering, and this morning you stole Kol’s pillow and threw it out the window because he was snoring too loudly," he reads, his expression betraying nothing.

Once finished, Elijah looks at his brother pointedly. Klaus reveals a lethal fang.

Elijah then calls out to Rebekah to cancel all appointments for the next three weeks (“ _What_ appointments?” she asks, eyes narrowed. “What demented role play are you two doing this time?”), while Klaus all but sinks into the couch in his chagrin.

 

 

**3\. that’s just that**

 "Did anyone remember the di—"

"Oh, for God’s sake Elijah," Rebekah mutters, eyes rolling heavenward, "it’s a party. There is bound to be food. Stop worrying about the dip."

"Why are we even here?" is Klaus’ long-suffering remark as they make their way up the stone pathway, the only light coming from the glowing pumpkin heads scattered across the lawn.

The three of them stand on Elena’s front porch (Rebekah dressed as a mermaid, Klaus in his usual henley and beads (“I suppose your usual face is terrifying enough,” Rebekah snarks”) and Elijah in a suit.

Rebekah had rolled her eyes at  _that_  and had even suggested that Elijah be one of the Secret Service, “You don’t even have to make much of an effort!”

But Elijah had just blinked at her. “No. I’m a man in a suit.”), and despite the air of power that usually hovers around their presence, it seems almost awkward. Especially when Kol comes crashing out of one of the windows, Damon yelling after him, “Trick or treat, motherfucker!”

Elena opens the door to let them in, head bobbing in exasperation. “Happy Halloween.”

 

 

**4\. moneyball**

"You lying cheat!" Klaus growls, almost upending the board in his frustration at Kol managing to get both Boardwalk  _and_ Mayfair in barely two rounds.

Kol shrugs and shuffles his game money slowly, mockingly, much like the smile that is now on his face. “Not my fault you happen to be terrible at these things. I wonder how you even handled the crash of 1920.”

While Klaus glowers and mutters murderously under his breath, Rebekah is busy arranging all her hotels with that same smirk on her face. “He didn’t. We had Elijah look them over.”

"The only time he made it seem like I was needed," Elijah says, with no trace of bitterness. If at all, he seems to be almost nostalgic.

The fondness in his voice silences Klaus’ tirade, and he says: “Of course you were needed. Always and forever, brother.”

"Just as I will always and forever beat all of you at this game," Kol says smugly, sweeping all of their property cards towards his already-big pile.

Rebekah, Elijah and Klaus take great pleasure in flipping the board in his face.

 

 

**5\. all those friendly people**

It’s when thy’re preparing dinner (or rather: Elijah prepares; Kol just sticks knives into the roast Elijah is marinating and laughs like it’s a funny joke) that Kol says he’s going to be starting school next Monday.

If Elijah’s suspicious, he doesn’t show it. There is no pause in his chopping of onions after Kol’s announcement, and he asks wryly, “This doesn’t have anything to do with your discovery of slingshots, does it?”

"I have no idea what you’re talking about, brother," Kol says, the shine in his eyes reflecting nothing of the rubber bullets and Rebekah’s schedule safely hidden in his backpack.

 

 

**6\. settle, settling**

"Stop it," Rebekah hisses, cornering Kol one morning. "Stop sitting with me at lunch, stop shooting things at me in Chemistry, stop _cheating off of me_ in Calculus—”

"Tecnically," Kol says, raising a finger, "I was _about_ to cheat on you, but then I saw you’re every bit as hopeless as you were a century ago, so…” Rebekah seems to swell up in her anger, so he deploys a different tactic. “Besides, I never get to see you. Is it so wrong of me to want to?”

There’s a pause, and Kol channels as much sincerity as he can muster into their staring contest. Finally, Rebekah sighs. “I’ve a sneaking suspicion you have fifth period PE too. Come on.”

 

 

**7\. once upon a time, on the same side: high school au**

Klaus likes to draw her when she does cartwheels in the football field. She’s a twirl of colour  _(every_ colour imaginable, right down to her shoelaces) and once she gets started it’s like she won’t ever stop.

Caroline stretches out her legs and looks around, taking in a breath she doesn’t necessarily need, smiling. Always smiling—

(but never at him).

And then, as if sensing his presence, she squints her eyes in the bright sun to where he’s sitting at the bleachers. But she won’t be able to find him; he’s already gone.

 

 

**8\. bumble and bumble: high school au**

"No," Rebekah announces, even before Klaus had time to open his mouth.

"What is your problem?" he mutters, setting down his tray. "For the last time, you look  _fi_ —”

"No, I do not look ’fine’,  _Nik_ " Rebekah air-quotes. "You used up all my hair conditioner, and now my hair is frizzy. I’m having a bad hair day because of  _you,_ so no: you can’t sit with me.”

Klaus gives her a look which brought exasperation to a whole new level, and was about to express said exasperation, until Finn plopped down next to them. “What are you two nattering on about now?”

"Someone used up all my hair-conditioner this morning," Rebekah says, sending razor-sharp glances at Klaus.

"Oh, that would be me. I rather like the smell of it, don’t you?" Finn asked, running a hand through to his hair that, only now, Klaus noticed to be extraordinarily shiny.

Klaus and Rebekah don’t quite know what to say to that.

 

 

**9\. my waltz in her hands**

Their feet float over the dance floor and his hand rests low on the small of Elena’s back and her fingers trace the skin on the back of his neck and all he can think about is how much he would like to press her against a wall, to break through the whisper of space between their bodies, to taste the wine on her lips.

They melt together against a backdrop of chamber music and hushed conversation, and Elijah banishes any thought of kissing her from his mind - instead, lets his eyes linger on her lips.

They are dancing, and for now (for _now_ ), that is enough.

 

 

**10\. princess of china**

Dan—eighteen, closet writer, with a shock of dark hair and even darker eyes—stands before the large double doors of his date’s mansion. He takes in a deep breath, tugs on his collar absentmindedly (he hates ties. Rebekah is hot. Rebekah likes ties. You do the math).

He raises a hand to the gold-plated knocker, but the door seems to open of its own accord. His cautious ‘hello’ echoes through the dark foyer, and he fervently hopes none of her family members are home. He’s heard a lot about the elusive brothers of Rebekah Mikaelson. He’d like to leave it at that.

"Rebekah?" he calls, and takes a step inside. The second the sole of his leather shoe touches down on the marble floor, a figure swoops - like, literally  _swoops_ \- down on him, scaring the bejeesus out of him.

Aforementioned figure turns out to be another guy, about his height, lean and with a malicious quirk to his lips. He moves like a jungle cat stalking its prey. Slow. Careful. Lethal.

"We haven’t officially met," he says breezily. "I’m Kol Mikaelson."

A voice, deeper and without the musical lilt in Kol’s, says from down the hall: “Is Rebekah’s date here, then?”

Dan’s eyes dart from Kol’s (narrowed) to the other brother’s (coolly blank) as he walks down. He’s carrying a silver platter of something, and he’s in a suit pressed sharp enough to give you a paper cut or two.

"I’m Elijah," he says genially. "Please, have one. Rebekah will be right  down."

"Thanks," Dan says, trying to keep his voice as level as possible - until he looks down at the platter Elijah’s offering and nearly chokes on his own spit.

It’s cocktail sausages, Dan thinks desperately, thin, curled ones - it must be, slathered in some deep red sauce to make it look like - like blood. Decorative. Shockingly realistic.

(But he still can’t quite explain why they look like battered, bloodied, fingers.)

"Something the matter?" Elijah asks, and it occurs to Dan that under that calm demeanour lies a crazed madman.

At Elijah’s raised eyebrow, Dan mutters a hurried ‘no’ and swipes one from the tray with his right hand (his left remains in his pocket, his fingernails embedded deep into the flesh of his palm) and bites down. It crunches.

Dan looks from Elijah (still staring down at him) to Kol (still with that smirk on his face) bewilderedly. “Is this—are these _real_?”

"Of course not, don’t be daft." And the brother he can only assume to be Klaus appears, sauntering down the spiral staircase. He gives a smile that looks painfully fake (his teeth glint), but Dan doesn’t care in his relief. He chews a bit more, then swallows, and Klaus continues:

"Do you know how long fingernails take to cook? And we only found out you were coming about thirty minutes ago." Klaus reaches the foot of the stairs, and his smile widens. 

Dan looks at Klaus, his eyes widening in his dawning horror, with what appeared to be a  _real human finger_ pinched between his thumb and forefinger. A real human finger that he had bitten on, chewed, and  _swallowed_.

"It’s an acquired taste," Kol says snidely, "like our sister. Now are you doing to finish that or—" Kol doesn’t get to finish his sentence, because he finds a fingernail smacked against his forehead and a door slamming in his face as Dan scampers the hell out of there. 

Kol’s eyes darken, Klaus runs a finger through the bloodstain on Kol’s forehead and brings it to his mouth for a taste, and Elijah deposits the tray on a side table before asking, “Is it your turn to go after them, or mine?”

Klaus’s answer is interrupted by Rebekah appearing at the top of the staircase, fingers working to fasten her earrings. “What was that? I heard the door—is Dan here yet?”

Her brothers blink up at her (“Dan? What kind of peasant name is that?” “Were you expecting someone? I was unaware, sister.” “I need a drink.”) and Rebekah frowns, tapping Dan’s number into her phone.

He never picks up.


	2. Chapter 2

**11\. run, whirlwind, run** // elena+elijah - end of worlds au

It’s the end of everything as they know it and her eyes are as dead as the rest of the world.

Elena sits on a citadel of bones, licking the blood of her fingers, rubble on her shoulders and dust on her boots and Elijah thinks she looks resplendent in her fire and her rage.

Elijah approaches her the way one might approach a queen, head lowered just the slightest, but that small smirk is there (always there). Elena allows him her hand, and he wants to lick the blood out of the crevices of her nails, wants to kiss the center of her palm, wants to cradle her small hand in his own, wants to turn it to dust, the way it rests between his calloused fingers.

Elena looks at him with an edge to her lips, a set in her jaw. She wants him to do it (dares him to do it), and for the longest moment they just look at each other—

until he drops her hand and bids her a good day, before going on his way. There are other cities to burn, and he wants to see the way her eyes burn with them.

 

 

 **12\. miss atomic bomb** // elijah+rebekah - precious

A serpentine glint and a gleam of silver is the only thing Elijah sees before Rebekah turns up her coat collars.

"Well - good bye, Elijah," Rebekah says hastily, and she’s almost out the door when Elijah catches her arm.

He holds out his hand. “Give it here.”

She turns her blue eyes on him: wide, blinking, unwavering. “Whatever do you mean?”

"You’re going to the opera," Elijah says of the carriage parked outside. "You know what happens when you go to the opera. Especially when you get a private box.  _Especially_  if Kol was the one to goad you to do so.”

Rebekah grumbles, but snatches the necklace from her neck and slaps it into his waiting palm. Elijah tries not to look appalled. Much.

Blood stains, he reminds her, is hard to get off of emeralds. “Especially the way the stone is cut!” he calls after her, but she’s already stepping into the carriage with a huff, head determinedly turned away from him.

"I’ll get you another one," Elijah says finally, exasperated, "one you can bring to parties."

Only then does Rebekah crack a smile.

 

 

 **13\. guns out** // klaus+stefan - choke/free/full moon

"I could kill you, so easily." Klaus has his fangs out as he traces the skin on Stefan’s neck.

"You could kill us all," Stefan agrees, if only to appease him enough to unwrap his friend’s fingers from around his neck.

Klaus always does get so sentimentally murderous when they watch the ball drop. Below them, the crowd is a writhing mess of glitter and sweat, and Stefan suspects that Rebekah is in it. He sighs with what little air he is allowed and jingles the melting ice in his glass - he’ll never get that drink, will he?

He feels his throat constricting, hears the beginnings of a snap before Klaus lets him go, eyes intent on the bruises blooming behind his collar. Stefan rubs some feeling back into it and leans back in his seat. On stage, Gloria whips her head back and keens into the microphone.

"Brother," Stefan promises, his voice a little hoarse, "Next time it will be my hands wrapped around  _your_  neck.”

He leaps into the crowd to find Rebekah before Klaus can form a response.

 

 

 **14\.  the scientist** // rebekah+kol - garden/alive/stars

We have a garden, she tells him, stepping back to let him through the doorway.

Still in the clothes he’d slept in for two hundred years, Kol surveys the magnolias without much interest but takes a moment to inspect the white roses.

"I wonder how much of Nik’s blood it would take for us to turn the whole garden red." He grins up at his sister, who looks uncomfortable. 

"Kol," she says, "I’m angry too, but you musn’t say these things, it’s dangero—"

"It won’t be, once I’ve put him inside a coffin myself," he tells her darkly. "I’ll cut him up and throw him to the stars. We’ll toast to him, dance under him, look up to him - isn’t that what he’s always wanted?"

"Kol," Rebekah whispers, eyes wide.

"Fret not, sister," Kol tells her, and he guides her back to the patio. "I’ll keep you safe. But first I need a drink."

His mind made up, Rebekah has no choice but to follow him inside.

 

 

 **15\. the drummers begin to drum** // rebekah+kol - music

Kol hates pop music. He doesn’t understand how she can smile and shake her hips to it, can’t fathom why she’s always holding her phone to her ear and bopping her head to it.

And then Rebekah invites (reads: compels) a bunch of girls to come over one day, and from the smell of them they’re all quite human, but Kol can’t even  _bring_  himself to get his fangs out because they’re all doing moving their hips and pulling their legs over their heads and it’s all just so new, so baffling to him, that he shuts himself off in his room.

The next week, Rebekah explains cheerleading to him, explains the importance of music and cues and how it feels to have the music so loud you can feel it in your bones, “Like  _you’re_  the music,” she gushes, arms splayed everywhere.

Kol gets it, whatever floats her boat, but gives a plain no when she asks him to come along to Cheer Offs.

 

 

 **16\. we fall into the river** // rebekah+caroline - erratic

Rebekah is skin and sweat and Marc Jacobs perfume.

Fingers pulled through hair, kisses light as air down her neck - Rebekah arches into her. She likes that. Alright.

"Too slow," Rebekah says, and suddenly Caroline’s flipped onto her back, Rebekah’s fingers picking at the buttons of her jeans.

It’s alright. She likes this too.

 

 

 **17\. almost made me move out of town** // rebekah+kol AND rebekah+elijah - dancing at prom

After Nik had supposedly died, Kol had taken her on a road trip of sorts, waking her up at the crack of dawn always with pancakes in his mouth and a haphazardly-packed duffel bag in his hand. She doesn’t question their destination—which, if she had mentioned it in the odd postcard she sends Elijah every few weeks, Elijah would have pointed out was strange of her because

A) It’s Kol, and

B) Rebekah and Kol routinely argue over a great many things, not to gain the upper hand, but simply for the sport of it

That was, of course, assuming he read them. She also should have mentioned that they’d kind of borrowed Elijah’s Mercedes for the road trip; should have asked if it was okay (the answer would have been  _no_ , because the last time he let Kol borrow his car it had ended up being driven off the Brooklyn Bridge) but sometimes her postcards get sent back to her because they can’t trace Elijah’s whereabouts, so when it inevitably breaks down on the side of the road somewhere in new Mexico, Rebekah has a triumphant smile on her face as she thinks,  _serve Elijah right._

Kol, with all his sadistic ways and horrible table manners, was the one who eventually put a smile on his face, from the way he lets her have the first bite of the humans they take turns tag-teaming, to the way he leaves yellow daisies on her bed when it’s time for them to move on.

But then Nik came back from the dead and Kol left, and if Elijah had read all the postcards that had gotten returned to her he would have known how she had ached for his return, how Nik had played her like a marionette and pulled all the right strings to get her to mold into his plans that somehow always seemed to echo  _always and forever_. Always and forever, Kol had snorted as he left, Rebekah tugging and pulling at his sleeve.  _I want nothing to do with Nik’s overly-exclusive band of misfits_.

She writes Elijah one last postcard as she sits on Kol’s little-used room, writes of the places she’s been and the sights she’s seen, writes of yellow flowers and how Kol had thought it a happy colour. She writes how she hopes Elijah is happy where he is; hopes that he is living a far better life than he’s had with them, because she wants none of his happiness and none of his existence in her own. She sends it off with a crude little drawing of a yellow daisy (her own version of a  _fuck you_ , if you may), and lets herself believe she can be happy without her brothers.

When Kol comes back, it’s only to press the white-oak stake into her back, but she still cries and screams and shakes when he goes out in a roar of yellow flames. This time, the postcard she’d sent doesn’t come back, but then again neither does Elijah.

Matt turns her down at prom and people side-eye her as she sits alone at her table, fiddling with the flower in her hair, trying to make herself smile and not look angry, or worse—hurt. But it’s hard to stop the wobble to her lips when she smells him, the clean scent of aftershave and cedarwood and spicy berries, and looking at the sharp lines that made up Elijah. The arm he holds out to her feels like an apology, but she takes it without looking at him.

He leads, swinging her softly to the music, their feet barely touching the ground the way it never did in so many other balls of centuries past. Elijah pulls her close and she hears him say, low in her ear, “I’m sorry, Rebekah.”

And that’s all it takes.

She rests her cheek on his shoulder and he hums into her hair, and he says, “Yellow. You look lovely, just—unexpected.”

“It’s a happy colour,” she wants to sniff indignantly, but it gets all watery instead. She feels Elijah rub small circles into her back, and when a shadow falls across Elijah’s face for a moment it’s Kol she’s dancing with, Kol with his smooth hands and damning smirk, Kol with a yellow daisy in the breast pocket of his tuxedo, smiling at her in a way none of her brothers ever managed to. For a moment it’s Kol who’s holding her close, telling her that he’ll never leave alone again, and for as long as the music plays she lets herself believe it.

 

 

 **18\. we are trees** // stefan+caroline - scarred

"You’re making a home in me," Stefan says one day when they’re walking in the woods. Caroline wants to chase rabbits. Not to eat, she says, they’re just so cuddly.

"So what if I am?" Caroline sounds annoyed; she’d just tripped over a root. "You’re like, my best friend."

"I’m not always going to… be here, Caroline," Stefan says haltingly. "I might want to leave one day. When it all gets to be a bit too much."

"How are you sure it’s not going to be  _me_  leaving?” Caroline says, angry now. She abandons her quest for bunnies and turns to face him head-on. “Why do people treat me like I’m so goddamn dispensable?”

"You’re not," Stefan insists, "but you have roots here. Family. And me…"

Caroline wrinkles her nose, no doubt thinking about how they’d accidentally walked in on Damon and Elena making out earlier. “Quit it with the emo, Stefan. If you go, I’m coming. Obvs.”

She turns back and crouches down, maybe she heard something. “We’ll bring Bonnie, too. Matt, if he wants to come. It’ll be awesome, like a roadtrip.”

It’s not really what he meant by  _one day_ , but Caroline’s determined not to talk about it, so - okay.

Stefan places a hand on her back. “Right there. You see it?”

Yeah, she says, and pounces.

 

 

 **19\. i don't want to be your friend** // katherine+caroline - "How much lighter fluid is too much?" "You're over thinking this"

"Oops."

“ _Oops?_ " Caroline seethes, "Everyone is dead, and all you say is oops?"

"Yeah well, it was an accident, what do you want me to say?" Katherine’s snappy retort comes with an excellent bitchface, which Caroline doesn’t see because she’s already buried her face in her hands.

"Hey." Katherine prods her shin with the toe of her boot. "Get off the table. I need it."

"What for?" Caroline wails softly through her fingers.

Katherine drums her fingers on the oiled sandalwood. “Uh, the deletion of evidence? Since I can’t exactly compel the people in this house, and you won’t because of your “moral code”,” she air quotes.

Caroline sighs, bitter and long. “Fine. But get something smaller.”

Katherine narrows her eyes, but Caroline just waves her away from the dining table, opting instead to grab the chairs. “If you want to start a fire, smaller things burn faster - like, bigger surface area or whatever, they heat up really quick… What, I pay attention in Physics, alright?” Caroline says indignantly.

But all Katherine does is smirk and cock her hips. “I like the way you think.”

 

 

**20\. nothing is sweet between my teeth** // 046, 094

**046 - monster**

She has blood dripping in the cracks of her teeth, her hair is in disarray: leaves and twigs and blood matted to her scalp. Her eyes - he doesn’t know where they’ve gone. They’re not looking at him, not looking at the crossbow trembling in his hands, they’re looking right at his throat.

"C-Caroline." 

You’re hideous.

"You’re beautiful." He knocks his arrow and shoots.

**094 - full moon**

"I told you," Damon hisses. "Of all the people who would  _not_  make it as a vampire—”

And then Damon’s up against a tree, blinking dazedly, blood running down the back of his head from where the branch grazed him. “Shut up,” Stefan says, slowly, carefully. “I did not ask you to help me find her just so you could kill her. If you touch - no, you look at me -” his grip tightens around Damon’s neck, “- _if you touch her_ , I will end you.” _  
_

There’s a snap of a twig and they both jump - eyes feral, shoulders hunched, feet wide apart - and then there’s crying. A soft whimper that grows into something distressed.

They find Caroline on the ground, covered in the worst of the woods. The hot tears streaming down her cheeks wash away some of the blood smeared on her face. And then there’s Matt, broken and bloodied in her arms.

"I was trying to outrun Tyler," she says, heartbroken, "when Matt found me. I didn’t - I didn’t mean to—"

A little ways off, Damon curses and strikes the ground with a stone. Stefan just drops to his knees, gathering her in his arms. “Oh, Caroline.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Some of these are kinda old, dating back to like a year ago. I just wanted to put them all in one place. Feel free to leave prompts and such!


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